


Where We'll Land

by SublimeDiscordance



Series: And Then There Were Three [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Feelings, Growing Up Together, Jamie and Raleigh are giant puppies, M/M, Multi, Sassy!Jamie, Sassy!Raleigh, Sibling Incest, Some Fluff, Some angst, Third Becket Brother, Threesome - M/M/M, Yancy Becket Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-19 04:16:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2374199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/SublimeDiscordance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the sight of those blue-gray eyes, so like Raleigh's, so like his own, the small bubble that had previously held only him and his younger brother is expanded to hold one more. They are three. And nothing will ever change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. just keep holding my hand

**Author's Note:**

> *coughcough*  
> I'm a horrible person.
> 
> This started with [one damn post](http://ohhaiguise.tumblr.com/post/98269417069) and then just sort of [evolved outward from there](http://ohhaiguise.tumblr.com/post/98272961154).
> 
> The underage warning is for descriptions of sexual situations involving a 17 year old. Because legality and such. No worries, it's not like "And then they were 13 and having sex" because ew, no thank you.
> 
> Also the timeline is being fucked-with a tiny bit. Just. Because fanfiction. (not like it's not fucked enough as it is anyway)
> 
> Epigraph:  
>  _Through the dark there's a way_  
>  _There's a love, there's a place_  
>  _Where we don't have to hide_  
>  _We can dream all night._  
>  -Adam Lambert, "Nirvana"

There is nothing—has never been anything—Yancy won't do for his little brothers.

 

-

 

The day Raleigh comes home, Yancy still just three years old, he looks directly into those bright, blue eyes, and, in that moment, knows that this is it, this is the reason he is alive. It’s with a certainty that only toddlers can muster that he proclaims that Raleigh is _his_ little brother and he isn't sharing, much to the amusement of his parents. Then, just under a year later—two days after Yancy's fourth birthday, in fact—another small life is placed in his arms: Jamieson, or, as they would come to call him, Jamie. And, just like that, at the sight of those blue-gray eyes, so like Raleigh's, so much like his own, the small bubble that Yancy had built around his life, the tiny blip in the cosmos that had only held him and Raleigh within its invisible walls, is expanded by the space of another life. They are three. And nothing is ever going to change that.

 

-

 

Yancy dotes on his brothers, helps take care of them, calms them when they cry, even sings to them when they’re upset and his parents are at the end of their collective rope. He’d learned to change diapers for Raleigh—had thought nothing of it, because that's what big brother's were supposed to _do_ , right?—and exercises those skills again with Jamie. Kisses away their hurts when they inevitably do something where he can’t save them. Helps hold their arms up for their first steps.

Raleigh and Jamie, for their part, get along well enough. Play together, somehow managing to keep their squabbling for certain toys to a minimum. They babble back and forth before they both start really speaking. When Raleigh says his first word, Jamie mimics it immediately, a huge smile on his round face; Yancy can claim that his name had been the first thing both of his brothers had ever said. Well, not his name, exactly, but as close as they could likely get under the circumstances.

 

-

 

When he’s five—about to turn six—and has to start going to school, Yancy nearly runs back to the house when Raleigh and Jamie, both in their mother's arms, burst out crying, two pairs of arms reaching for him, two voices repeating his name over and over. Only his father's grip on his shoulder keeps him going. That and the fact that he’s already buckled into the seat of the car. The two of them are nearly inconsolable when he returns that evening, and Yancy spends nearly an hour just holding them close, whispering promises that he won’t going anywhere, that he was _right there_. Later, after they were all supposed to be in bed, Yancy sneaks out of their room and into his parents'. He argues with both of them that he should wait another year to go, wait until Raleigh and Jamie are old enough to understand.

"You have to go to school, Yancy," his father grumbles. "They'll understand that eventually. That's all there is to it. You can't baby them forever."

Their father's word are final, no matter how much Yancy might want to scream that they _are_ still babies, they’re his baby brothers. He knows, though, that it won’t accomplish anything, and the way Richard Becket has rolled away from his son until his back is facing the door only serves to reinforce the point. The next morning is a more subdued repeat of the previous day, though Yancy does go to Raleigh and Jamie individually and give them a kiss on the forehead, reiterating his promise that he‘s not leaving for good and adding one that he’ll be back soon.

 

 -

 

The day Raleigh joins Yancy in school is worse than when Yancy started on his own. For the first time since a few days after Yancy had started school, he worries about his brother being at home without him. Their mom is still there, sure, but Jamie is without either him or Raleigh for the first time. He finds Raleigh in the cafeteria, the two of them carving out their own spot at one of the tables, Raleigh practically clinging to his side and glancing around at the other kids with a kind of wide-eyed terror and suspicion. Yancy hadn't ever really sat with anyone for lunch before, so having Raleigh there to talk is...different. He likes it. Excepting, of course, that all either of them seem to be able to talk about is Jamie.

"Do you think he's lonely?" Raleigh finally asks, voicing the question Yancy knows both of them are thinking. Yancy pulls Raleigh into his side, letting Raleigh lean his head on his shoulder as he answers.

"I hope not."

 

-

 

Jamie isn't okay, as it turns out. According to their mom, he’d spent the whole day crying and asking why they left him all alone. The only solution had come when their mom had sat him down and started reading to him. He'd apparently asked to start reading himself, and hadn't put the book down until he'd finished it.

After that, it’s a downhill spiral. Jamie had discovered books, and they never let him go. It becomes a common occurrence for Yancy to go find his brother to tell him dinner is ready, only to find Jamie buried in the copy of _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ their parents had gotten for him, working through it paragraph by paragraph even though he'd finished it at least three times already. His smile when Yancy tells him to come downstairs, that they’re waiting for him, though, is still exactly the same. And maybe Yancy cherishes that smile, just a little, happy that he still has that part of his baby brother at the very least.

It isn’t that Jamie’s stopped playing with Raleigh and Yancy, or stopped talking to them entirely. It’s more that the time he spends reading is definitely felt by the two older brothers as an absence, as if something they hadn't known they possessed is abruptly...not gone, but hidden through a fog.

Even so, Yancy, for his part, is grateful that their brother has discovered something to get him through the day. He even lets Jamie read his books for school, which the kid tears through like they’re nothing. On one memorable occasion—the first—Yancy brings home a printed out reading assignment from his teacher—a packet of ten pages of photocopies—with instructions to read three pages that evening. When he hands it over to Jamie, his scribbled answers to the question the teacher had assigned tucked back into his backpack, the kid has finished reading all ten pages within twenty minutes.

For a singular moment, Yancy feels jealousy towards his baby brother. Jealousy that the kid seems to be able to just…pick things up and understand them. Could get through ten pages the same amount of time it’d taken Yancy to get through three. It isn’t _fair_.

The jealousy, however, disappears as quickly as it comes. Vanishes into nothing at the sight of Jamie’s beaming face, the way the kid is looking at him hopefully, pages clutched in his hand, almost as if nervous. As if he might’ve done something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Wow, Jamie,” Yancy smiles, taking the stapled-together papers from where his brother is holding them out, Raleigh watching them from the kitchen table where he’s practicing his addition, “you finished already? That’s _awesome_ , buddy.”

Pulls his brother to him. Plants a chaste kiss on Jamie’s forehead. Squeezed the kid tight.

“Can I have more, Yancy?” The voice is muffled slightly where Jamie is pressing himself against Yancy’s chest, and he finds himself nodding even though the kid can’t see him.

“‘Course you can. Anything you want.”

 

-

 

When Jamie joins them in school the next year, his teachers have him for all of two days before they are all called in for a parent-teacher conference. Their mom and dad don’t let them listen in, have the three of them sit in the hallway outside the principal’s office, but when they come out it’s to announce that Jamie is going to be in Raleigh’s year.

Yancy’s brothers, of course, are ecstatic.

 

-

 

Ten years pass.

The brothers change: grow closer in some ways, and fall apart in others.

 

-

 

Jamie and Raleigh start a rivalry that Yancy reminds them repeatedly is stupid, since the main prize seems to be his attention. They compete in grades, in couch space, and in games. However, despite that, the two of them become inseparable. One year, several kids in their year get it in their heads that, since Jamie is younger than them, he’s an easy target. It’s the first time Yancy knows about that Raleigh has punched someone, and, despite the stern lecture their parents give him afterwards, he hugs his brothers close to him later that night, telling them what an awesome job they’d done looking out for one another.

Jamie grows up into the bookworm they always knew he’d be, almost scarily smart. Raleigh picks up sports when the two of them start high school, lacrosse in particular, and, of course, is instantly popular. And, because Jamie can’t let Raleigh get away with doing something he can’t, he joins track—long distance in particular. Yancy doesn’t join a sport, per se, although he does take up going for runs with Jamie in the morning before they leave for school. Which, then, turns into the three of them going for a run in the morning once Raleigh finds out.

Yancy comes out when he’s a freshman in high school, pulling his entire family aside to tell them that he’s gay. Jamie, of course, asks the practically requisite question wondering what it means when someone is “gay”.

“It means your brother loves other boys instead of girls,” their mom explains, “that instead of having a wife like your father has, one day he’ll have a husband.”

And if Yancy starts crying at those words, smiling so widely through the tears that he’s sure his face is going to rip in half? Well. Who could blame him, really?

 

-

 

Senior year finds Yancy applying to colleges. It also finds their mother receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis three months before she finally dies. Her death serves only to draw the brothers closer together. Raleigh and Jamie—or Jay, as they usually call him now—might share a room while Yancy has his own down the hall, but all three of them bundle up together in Yancy’s bed that night, holding one another close, refusing to let go, holding each other and being held as they cry themselves to sleep. They keep on like that for almost a month before their dad, drunk, walks in on them one night and tells them to stop, that it isn’t normal. The word “freak” may get thrown around somewhere in there, which is the moment Yancy slams the door in their father’s face. They stop the night after, though Yancy doesn’t manage to sleep that night. It gives him time to think, though, and ponder the _ache_ he feels in his chest, an ache that has nothing to do with the emptiness of their house—the presence of their mom fading a little bit more every day—and everything to do with his empty room, the spot on his sheets where Raleigh and Jamie had slept, curled around him and one another, feeling oddly vacant without them both there.

Yancy loves his brothers. Loves them more than anyone else in the entire world. Had helped raise them, had changed their fucking diapers. He had been there for them for their first steps, their first words, their first time losing a tooth…he’d been there for everything. Knows everything about his brothers. Knows things they didn’t even know about themselves, like the way Raleigh’s ears turn red when he’s lying, or how Jamie mouths along to the dialogue of the books he reads when he gets really into it. Yancy loves his brothers completely, unconditionally. They’re his brothers—they’re _family­_ —and what else do they really have, in the end?

 

-

 

On a Saturday evening in the following summer, their father quietly packs his things in the middle of the night and leaves. No note. No explanation.

Yancy does the only sensible thing. He withdraws from his college, finds a job, and starts raising his brothers on his own.

Less than two weeks later, a monster emerges from the Pacific Ocean and destroys San Francisco, signaling the end of the world. Beyond the novelty, though, the three Beckets hardly feel it. Their world had begun ending a long time ago.

 

-

 

They take to sleeping in their parents’ old room. Yancy can never remember which of them actually starts it or even suggests it, just that one night they all find themselves curled together on the queen-size bed, trying to get impossibly closer to one another as Jamie cries that he misses mom, asking why dad left them, and Yancy holds him close as Raleigh moulds himself to their youngest brother’s back.

That same night, as he takes in the sight of his brothers curled around him, Yancy is struck by how _beautiful_ Raleigh and Jamie both are. Finds himself wondering when the hell that had happened, when their boyish features had become replaced with hard planes and jawlines that would make any person with half a brain weak in the knees; when his scrawny little brothers had been replaced by these two near-perfect beings that were, somehow, still related to him. And, yet, neither of them have ever held steady girlfriends. It isn’t, he knows, as if they couldn’t have any girl—or boy, he thinks to himself, trying to be egalitarian about it—they might want, what with their looks and how much like overgrown puppies they can be. They simply…haven’t really dated. Then again, he reasons, they’re only in eleventh grade. Nothing says they have to have tried dating yet…isn’t like Yancy’s had more than a single boyfriend, anyway, so he’s to judge?

He resolves himself to not think about it any further, choosing instead to sink into the warmth his brothers radiate like miniature furnaces. A small thrill goes through him when Raleigh sighs happily and snuggles closer while Jamie makes a small noise of his own, and Yancy falls asleep to the sound of his brothers’ heartbeats.

 

-

 

They don’t talk about it. They don’t question it. It’s just something they do.

Time continues to move. The Becket brothers continue to live, keeping themselves going as best as they can. Yancy continues to ignore the cloud of…something that hovers above him, always over his shoulder, brighter and more insistent whenever Raleigh or Jamie are around.

The world keeps turning, spinning madly through space, and Yancy holds his brothers close to him as he tries to keep them anchored to the surface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, yes, the name is spelled "Jamieson" but it's pronounced "Jame-ih-son" for some weird reason. Just. In case you were wondering. Also, yes, Jamie is pretty much meant to be a male version of Jazmine (about whom we know...almost nothing, so yeah...I made shit up haha)
> 
> Also, the FC for Jamie, as you probably guessed based on the posts I linked in the opening notes, is [A](http://38.media.tumblr.com/a4004bfd964151a6126a3ddfc36025f1/tumblr_nciu1xe5mg1sh5u3po1_500.jpg)[lexander Ludwig](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Ludwig). To be perfectly honest, I didn't really know much about him before this except that Tumblr loved him and I had a vague notion that he was in a show somewhere called Vikings. And then someone pointed out that he's Cato in Hunger Games and I was like oh that's why he looks so familiar.


	2. unfold, reallign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give you: the chapter where shit actually starts to happen. Enjoy. 
> 
> (also, google docs was being an asshole about transferring this over, so if anything comes out looking wonky, that might be a contributing factor)

It’s when his brothers are in their senior year of high school that Yancy catches them.

He’s home from work early, and Raleigh and Jamie should’ve gotten home from school about an hour earlier.

“Rals?” he calls out into the house, frowning at the relative silence. “Jamie? I’m home.”

He deposits his keys on the kitchen counter, the jangling of metal against linoleum jarring to his eardrums. “Guys?”

He hears it, then. From the room that Raleigh and Jamie’s used to share: the soft sound of moans, low grunts, and one of their bedsprings creaking lightly. Has to restrain a laugh because, clearly, one of them has been keeping something from him. Which means, therefore, that, as oldest brother, he has every right to rain on their parade. Cackling to himself, Yancy sneaks up the steps, the sounds of two people—two distinctly _male_ people—going at it quite enthusiastically. Can hear, once he’s outside the door, Raleigh’s voice distinctly saying, “ _Fuck_ , yeah, c’mon, fuckin’ harder— _fuck_ —”

Trying his hardest to not burst out into giggles—and to ignore the hot wad of something viscous and choking that claws up his throat—Yancy grabs the doorknob and, in one smooth motion, flings the door wide open.

“ _Surprise_ , Rals!” Yancy’s voice is sickly sweet, going for annoying older brother. “Guess you shoulda locked your door, huh kid—”

All the blood seems to fall from Yancy’s body in a rush, leaving him cold, frozen, all joking and humor gone from him when he actually sees. Actually takes in the image before him.

He can’t finish his sentence.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t fucking _breathe_.

Raleigh is on his back on what used to be his bed, legs spread wide, feet in the air. And between his legs, cock stretching Yancy’s younger brother wide open, is his youngest brother.

Jamie is fucking Raleigh.

Raleigh and Jamie are fucking.

His younger brothers are _fucking_.

And Yancy…Yancy is suddenly aware of the fact that he’s harder than he’s ever been before in his life.

“Oh _shit_ ,” Raleigh yelps, having a clearer view of the door than Jamie, who’s facing away from it. “Oh _shit_ , _Yancy_.”

Jamie’s entire body stiffens when Raleigh says Yancy’s name. Flings himself backwards a moment later, grabbing the edge of the comforter and trying, uselessly, to cover himself up as Raleigh yelps—probably from pain, Yancy guesses—before doing the same. They struggle for a moment, both trying to steal the blanket from one another, erections bobbing in the breeze before they compromise and sit right next to one another and share. It takes all of two of Yancy's thudding heartbeats before they look at one another in horror, faces bright red, and slide as far apart from one another as they can, as if the two of them sitting too close together will remind Yancy about what he’d just witnessed.

The entire thing takes all of a second, maybe two seconds, tops.

And it is so absolutely, completely _Raleigh and Jamie_ that Yancy can’t help it. Maybe he’s going crazy. Maybe it’s the weight that’s settled in his stomach, the viscous heat from before solidifying into a fiery, burning mass. Maybe it’s the lack of blood from how hard his dick is—and, oh, isn’t that just twenty different levels of fucked up? Whatever the reason, Yancy bursts out laughing.

Raleigh and Jamie turn an impossibly darker shade of red.

“What the _fuck_ , Yance?” Raleigh finally asks, and the absurdity of the words just makes Yancy laugh harder. So hard, in fact, that he has to search out Jamie’s old bed—really, a part of his mind reminds him, the three of them sharing a bed sort of makes such designations useless—and just…sit there for a minute.

It also gives him a moment to collect his thoughts. His many, many thoughts.

“So,” he starts slowly once his breathing is back to normal, “I want you to know, first of all—”

“We’re sorry, Yance,” Jamie interrupts him, blushing so hard that Yancy’s almost afraid the kid is gonna overheat or something. “We shouldn’t have, it’s my fault, I-I’m the one who started things, alright? Raleigh did didn’t force me into anything and I-I don’t want you to think that—”

“Jamieson,” Yancy cuts him off, using his brother’s full name to ensure the kid actually gets the message—which is to say, _he’s talking so shut up and listen_. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re not?” It’s Raleigh who blurts the words out, looking away almost immediately. Yancy shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes so he’ll stop looking at just how well sports have been treating both his brothers.

“No,” he finally says after a few moments’ silence, taking a long, hard look at what he _is_ feeling. “Surprised? Well, okay, honestly? Not all that surprised, either. But, _no_ ,” he looks up, meeting their eyes when they both sneak glances at him, “not mad. I suppose I’m, well…I think most of what I’m feeling is shock at the moment. And, _fuck_ , I don’t even know…” Yancy runs a hand through his hair, blinking several times at the wall behind his brothers.

“How long?”

They both look at him at the same time, eyes widening. Neither answers. Yancy makes his tone a little more forceful, a little more authoritative.

“ _How long_?”

Both of them refuse to look at him. Yancy sighs, eyes falling shut, fingers kneading at the bridge of his nose.

“Look, Rals, Jay, I love you both, okay? This…this doesn’t change that. This _won’t_ change that,” he looks back up at his brothers, willing them to see the truth in his eyes. “I just…I want to know, okay? You guys are my little brothers,” and, oh, doesn’t that make a sour taste twist in his mouth, “so it’s my job to look after you. So I’m gonna ask again, how long?”

“Uhm, a month? Maybe two?” The way Jamie says it makes the answer sound more like a question.

“And has it always been like,” a gesture at the two of them, “that?”

“No,” Raleigh is the one who speaks this time, quickly, emphatically. “We’ve been, uh, we mostly just made out or, like, y’know, jerked each other off. We’ve only been doing…that…sort of stuff,” okay, maybe Yancy has to keep himself from laughing at the face his brother is pulling, “for about two weeks.”

Yancy nods, though, taking that in, then opens his mouth again.

“And when were you two gonna tell me you liked dick?”

That earns him an eyeroll from Raleigh and a wide-eyed stare from Jamie.

“Right, because that just… _comes up_ in conversation,” Raleigh snorts softly. “It’s not that simple, Yance.”

And, alright, Yancy _does_ get a little angry at that. Not at anything more specific than the fact that they’d kept a secret from him.

“Right,” he fires back, “because I didn’t gather the entire family together when I was fourteen and confess to you all. Because that’s, y’know, not a thing that could happen. Or because, y’know, obviously, I’m gonna take it badly. Being gay myself and feeling the same w—”

Yancy practically swallows his tongue to stop himself from speaking because _what the fuck_ where did _that_ come from? Neither Raleigh nor Jamie, obviously, miss it. Or are convinced. Because his life is just perfect like that.

“Wait you—?”

“Yance, what’re you sayi—?”

“Does that mean—?”

“Look,” Yancy interrupts them, standing, and feels his face heating “it doesn’t matter, okay? Even if I did—if I did—” he gestures at the two of them, “—which I _don’t_ , then it wouldn’t matter. I’m your older brother. I’m supposed to take care of you. That’s all there is to it. I just…” he trails off, bringing his hands up to his face to scrub away the red. “Just, don’t do anything stupid, okay? And no more secrets?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just walks out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

 

-

 

To give them credit, neither of his brothers bother him about his near-slip for almost a week. When they do, though, they, _of course_ , cheat.

Which is to say, they confront him by waking him one morning with a blowjob. Raleigh has Yancy’s dick halfway down his throat while Jamie is lapping greedily at his balls and the parts of the shaft that Raleigh can’t quite take. And, because the universe obviously hates him, Yancy comes as soon as he catches sight of what they’re doing, the image of his cock down Raleigh’s throat, of Jamie practically making out with Raleigh around his dick, his _brothers_ sucking him off together, too much for him to handle.

As soon as he comes down, the first tears fall.

“Get out,” his voice is throaty, low; dangerous.

“Yance,” Raleigh tries, “it’s okay, alright? We wanted to show you—”

“I said _get out_.”

“Yancy, _please_ ,” Jamie’s trying, too, Yancy knows. Knows his brothers just want to help, in their own way. “We mean it, alright? It’s okay—”

“ _Get._ ” Yancy doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t change pitch, doesn’t waver at all. He’s proud of himself for managing that much. “ _Out_.”

He waits for all of three seconds before he sits up, fixing both his brothers with a watery glare when they don’t move, don’t do anything at all. “It is _not_ fucking okay. You—” fuck, the tears are flowing in earnest now, “—you don’t fucking _get_ it, alright? I-I _can’t_ want this. I’m not _supposed_ to have wanted this for years and years, since I was fucking _eighteen_. You,” Yancy casts his gaze at Raleigh, “you were fucking _fifteen_ then. And _you_ ,” moves his eyes to Jamie,” you were _fourteen_. You were _kids_. And I—I wanted—”

He bites down on the edge of his fist, trying not to vomit. Trying not to scream. Curls in on himself, all the anger gone. Feels his brothers both move to wrap themselves around him, they way they used to when they were little, the way they did after Mom died. The way they’ve done until…until a few days ago. It’s comfort and love. Nothing sexual. Nothing _more_. Just…comfort and love. Simple. Easy. _Pure_.

And Yancy…Something in Yancy’s head flips, is shattered to a million pieces and thrown off some kind of cliff, screaming the whole way.

He allows himself to be held. Allows himself to accept what his brothers are offering. Knows that, one day—probably soon—he’ll accept _everything_ they’re offering him like the greedy bastard he is deep down inside. Now that these feelings have aired themselves out, he can practically trace them back to their roots, back even before when he was eighteen. No, this shit started, he’s fairly certain, the moment he laid eyes on the two of them. Was practically fated to happen, even then.

Yancy allows himself to be held, and sinks into his brothers’ arms, letting his frustration, his self-loathing, flow out of him with from the torn rents that each shudder and each sob leave in him.

 

-

 

After that, both Raleigh and Jamie make sure to respect his boundaries, to be careful around him. However, Yancy…Yancy finds that he doesn’t mind pushing those boundaries as much anymore. Perhaps it was the cathartic nature of his breakdown, finally saying—giving life to—all those feelings and thoughts that’d been locked in his head for so long. Perhaps he’s just stopped giving a fuck because he knows his brothers want it, too. It doesn’t matter.

All Yancy knows is that, one day, before Raleigh gets out of the car to go to school, Yancy stops him and plants a soft kiss on his brother’s lips. Doesn’t stop to think about the fact that this is the first time they’ve kissed. Just smiles and says, “Have a good day at school, Rals.” That same day, as is the custom for days when Yancy can give them a ride home from school, Jamie sits up front. When his youngest brother gets in the car, Yancy leans over to give the kid a kiss in greeting. Jamie is stock-still for all of half a second before he makes a happy little sound and kisses back. However, before it can get too intense, Yancy pulls away, returning his attention to navigating out of the damn parking lot. He doesn’t, however, miss the look his brothers exchange.

After that, things change. After that, things just…start happening.

The three of them are watching a movie, having piled themselves together on the couch the way they used to as children, when Yancy realizes that, with Raleigh and Jamie so close—and especially with Jamie practically in his lap—he’s hard enough that his dick is actually getting uncomfortable in his jeans. So, of course, he taps his brothers on the ass to get them to move, and then divests himself of the constraining article of clothing, leaving himself in just underwear and his shirt. It gets him an odd look or two from his brothers, but those seem to vanish as soon as they realize just how hard he is. Raleigh actually moans softly, which only serves to make Yancy’s dick twitch visibly in his boxer briefs, a wet spot appearing near the swollen head. He’s also fairly certain that, when Jamie crawls back into his lap, the kid purposefully sits so that the line of Yancy’s dick rubs up and down the cleft of his ass.

Raleigh oh-so-casually forgets that he needs to bring clothes into the bathroom to change into after he showers. He walks out stark naked, towel draped over his shoulder, throwing a smile over to where Yancy and Jamie are curled up on the bed, Jamie reading while Yancy allows his baby brother to use his stomach like a pillow.

Jamie wins at their weekend tournament of Mario Kart, and jumps around in infectious joy before grabbing Yancy and kissing him hard, moving away a second later to do the same to Raleigh.

Both of his brothers keep giving Yancy hugs of thanks that perhaps last a little too long when he makes dinner. Jamie even goes so far as to grope Yancy’s ass once or twice. The cocky little bastard.

On and on it goes, the list of small things, small affections, that Yancy’s been tracking in his mind growing progressively longer until he can’t remember whether it was Raleigh or Jamie who sat in front when he picked them up yesterday, which one of them had leaned across the gearshift to kiss him softly on the cheek.

Yancy finds that, despite the guilt that still crawls in his gut occasionally, he’s happier than he’s been in…a long time. Finds that he smiles more. Feels as if a weight that’d been bearing down on his chest his entire life is finally, at long last, gone.

 

-

 

Everything changes the morning after New Year’s.

Yancy wakes to find that both his brothers had apparently decided to go to bed naked. And, as per usual, both are snuggled into his sides. Both are also completely, sinfully, hard.

It isn’t the first time this has happened. It isn’t even the second, or the tenth. It’s actually become something of a regular occurrence in their house lately. Hell, Yancy’s actually surprised that his brothers still wear clothes most of the time that they’re home. Both of them seem to have completely failed to inherit any sort of subtlety gene.

No, what makes this morning different is that Yancy is also naked. He doesn’t remember undressing before bed. Although, given how tired he’d been when they’d crashed last night, it somehow doesn’t surprise him. Hell, he can barely remember them watching the ball dropping in New York City, the broadcast time-delayed so that it would sync up to them out in Alaska. Actually, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t really remember getting into bed at all. Furrows his brow as memory returns to him. They’d stayed up to watch the ball dropping because Raleigh and Jamie had never managed to actually stay awake for it before, both of them usually partied out and snoring on the floor by eleven like the overly-exuberant children Yancy’s always known they are. However, this time around, Yancy’s job had been driving him particularly hard around Christmas, and New Year’s had been the first time he’d had a night where he was home at a reasonable time. All he’d wanted to do was fall into bed, but both of his brothers had insisted.

He remembers counting down with Raleigh and Jamie plastered to his side, remembers them both blowing noise makes as loudly as they possibly could. Remembers threatening to give each of them 2,016 punches if they even thought about blowing the damn things in his ears again. Remembers thinking the couch was awfully comfortable. And, after that…nothing.

He must make a noise or movement of some kind, because Raleigh, ever the light sleeper, lets out a sleepy mumble, sighs, and blinks his eyes open. Grins wide when he sees that Yancy’s awake and looking down at him.

“G’morning, Yance,” Yancy can’t help but think his brother looks awfully cute rubbing the sleep from his eyes like that, that the kid looks so fucking adorable and sexy with his hair tousled like that—

“So, gotta ask, s’there a snake in the bed, or are you just happy to see me?”

Before he can answer, Yancy feels Jamie’s hips cant forward, feels his littlest brother’s erection grind into his skin like a line of fire, marking him like a brand, and hears a moan sneak from between the kid’s lips. Can’t stop the one that sneaks from between his own. Raleigh, of course, just smiles wider.

“So you _are_ happy to see me, then?”

Yancy wants to snark something back, to pull his defenses back up, to push his brothers away, yet at the same time wants to pull them in, wants to fucking _drown_ in them. So far, he’s been able to keep the latter urge at bay, has been able to keep distance between them. This morning, though, before he can even try, Raleigh, rolls over on top of him, straddling Yancy’s hips and bringing their cocks into contact for the first time.

The spark that travels over Yancy’s skin nearly makes him scream, so powerful is the rush of _desire_ that races through him. Looking up, he finds that Raleigh’s face is hovering right above his own, and it’s only then that he realizes that his brother had cried out at the same time as him.

“Holy _fuck_ , Yance,” Raleigh breathes over Yancy’s lips, a hand moving from where he’d used it to catch himself to run down the side of Yancy’s face. “You feel so _good_ , bro. _Fuck_.”

“Rals, Rals I—” Yancy doesn’t know what he was going to say. Doesn’t get to find out, because Jamie is propping himself up on an elbow and claiming Yancy’s lips, barely managing to avoid knocking heads with Raleigh. Whatever the thought might’ve been, it disappears into nothingness. He’s kissed his brothers before, sure, but never…never like this. The kiss  Jamie is giving him, is gifting him with, is _everything_. It’s lust, caring, need, _love_ ; all of them wrapped up and forced into one singular, shining moment. For a moment Yancy could swear he can _feel_ what his brothers do, can feel their love for him just as strongly as the love for both of them that blossoms in his chest.

This, he realizes—this moment, with Raleigh wrapping a hand around both their cocks and pumping his hips and wrist, with Jamie’s tongue teasing his lips apart to taste—is his point of no return.

So Yancy…lets go.

Moans into the kiss. Starts thrusting his hips to match Raleigh’s movements, maximizing the friction both of them get. In an almost embarrassingly short time, he’s on the edge, just a hair’s breadth from release. He uses a hand to pull Jamie off of him, panting into the kid’s mouth, “Rals, Jay, fuck, I’m—”

Before he can even say the words, Jamie moves, faster than Yancy would’ve ever thought possible, and wedges his head between their bodies. Wraps his lips around both of them, letting the two of them thrust into his mouth in uneven intervals.

It’s all Yancy needs.

He comes with his brothers’ names on his lips, his world fading into nothing but the two of them for a singular, glorious instant, nothing but golden light and love and _Rals_ and _Jay_.

When Yancy’s vision clears, it’s to find that Raleigh has apparently come, too, a white string still connected to the corner of Jamie’s mouth where the kid is now on his back, stroking himself furiously as his tongue darts out to taste his lips. Yancy doesn’t think, just acts, rolling himself until he can wrap his lips around Jamie’s dick.

“Yancy, Yancy, oh _fuck_ , _Yancy_ ,” the kid groans, voice _wrecked_ , and then the cock in his mouth is swelling, pulsing, and something hot and bitter and so fucking _perfect_ is hitting the back of Yancy’s throat. He swallows reflexively, his eyes tracking up to take in Jamie as he comes.

His brother is so beautiful like this. Looks so fucking perfect coming apart for him. With Yancy’s mouth wrapped around his cock.

As Jamie comes back down, shivering lightly as Yancy suckles at his softening length, Raleigh moves from where he’d fallen to the bed, curling behind their youngest brother and wrapping protective arms around his chest. When Jamie’s eyes open, Yancy can see his brother take in the sight of him with his head still in the kid’s lap, almost playfully licking at the last few drops that trickle from his slit, watches as his head cranes slightly to lock gazes with Raleigh, leaning in to kiss one another sloppily.

_They’re beautiful together._

The thought comes to him, unbidden, and, instead of the crushing weight of guilt or self-recrimination Yancy has always expected, always dreaded, he’d be feeling when this moment came, everything just feels…right. As if this was always pre-ordained, always their destiny, and they’ve been unknowingly hurtling towards this point their entire lives.

“I love you,” Yancy says aloud, the words colliding with Jamie’s skin in a half-whisper, reverent, as if they’re sacred. He knows as soon as they’re out that he means them, that he’ll never take them back for anything; that he’ll never feel them with anything less than every single last fiber of his very being.

That he’ll never mean them any other way. _Could_ never.

His brothers pulls away from one another, wrapping themselves around Yancy’s body once more.

“Love you too, Yancy,” he can hear the smile in Jamie’s words, feel it in the light brush of lips that’s pressed to his skin, or the fingers that caress his jaw. Can feel something loosening in him, relaxing, slotting perfectly into place when Raleigh says the words, too.

 

-

 

After that, things move forward rapidly.

Early morning blowjobs become a regular thing—become Raleigh’s favorite way to wake him up. Yancy’s return to consciousness is now, more often than not, because he’s spending himself down his brother’s throat. Usually, Jamie will be up as well, watching or working himself into Raleigh’s ass depending on how awake the kid is at that point. The noises that Raleigh makes around Yancy’s dick, when their baby brother is balls deep inside of him, is almost always enough to make Yancy come if he hasn’t already.

The one notable exception is the morning when Yancy snaps wide awake, the familiar feeling of Raleigh’s lips on him, just as Jamie is pushing his way inside. The vibrations are, Yancy’s fairly certain, what had woken him. However, what makes this morning different than the all the others, what makes it stick out in Yancy’s mind, forever branded in his cortex, is what Jamie says.

Jamie is always mouthy during sex, always talks, always has to be doing _something_. The kid, Yancy’s noticed, can never just…sit still. Can never just _take it_. Usually, that means talking.

Usually, it’s just begging, whimpers, or other noises of encouragement.

Not today.

“You like that, Rals?” Yancy can hear his brother whispering in Raleigh’s ear, as clearly as if he were right there himself. “You like having my cock in your ass, big brother?” Raleigh shudders at that. “I bet you like imagining that it’s Yancy fucking you, don’t you?” Jamie’s eyes dart to Yancy then back to Raleigh, one arm curling around Raleigh’s abdomen. “Like to imagine him holding you down, that it’s him fucking you until you can’t remember your name, him spilling himself inside of you, him— _oh_ _fuck, shit_!”

All it takes is the realization that Jamie is coming inside of Raleigh as Raleigh spasms beneath him—has tipped himself and Raleigh over the edge with both of them imagining Yancy’s cock inside of them—to have Yancy emptying himself down Raleigh’s throat, a strangled, “Oh _fuck_ , Jay,” leaving him. There’s silence for a few moments after that, the only noise their heavy panting, Yancy shivering lightly when Raleigh’s hot breath ghosts over his spit-slick flesh. Then Jamie pulls himself slowly from within Raleigh, Raleigh making a soft noise of protest.

“Oh, hush,” Yancy admonishes him quietly, smiling half-drunkenly as he traces his thumb over the edge of Raleigh’s lips, sea-blue eyes seeking out his own. “If you’re really that disappointed about it, then be good and I promise I’ll give it to you nice and hard tonight.”

The silence stretches again, except this time it’s not even broken by the sounds of breathing, Yancys lungs freezing the second he realizes what he’d just said. Around him, he feels Raleigh and Jamie doing the same. He doesn’t dare to breathe, to quench the fire building in his chest, closes his eyes and tries to will the flush coating his skin away, until,

“You really mean that, Yance?”

The first thing Yancy sees when he opens his eyes again is Raleigh’s face, so earnest, looking like Yancy’s just gifted him the most precious thing ever. Behind his younger brother, Jamie looks on, eyes wide, almost pleading. Fuck, he’s never been able to say no to that face—to _either_ of those faces—and his brothers both know it.

“Yeah, Rals, I do.”

Strangely enough, he finds that, once he says the words, once he sees both Raleigh and Jamie’s faces splitting into wide grins, their eyes lighting up like he’s bestowing upon them the most precious thing imaginable, the last vestiges of lurking guilt and doubt simply…vanish. Which is why, instead of worrying, or beating himself up, or pushing his brothers away—metaphorically, if not physically—Yancy just smiles and adds, “Now, get up, Both of you. You have to be at school in,” he glances over at the clock, “an hour.”

“I call first shower!” Jamie’s bounding out of bed like the over-exuberant child Yancy sometimes forgets he is.

“Hey, fuck you, no fair!” Raleigh shouts back, rolling off the bed.

“That’s Yancy’s job!”

“Who said I was gonna fuck you, Jay?” Yancy asks, yelling loudly enough to be heard in the hallway, proud of himself when he manages it without even a trace of guilt; yeah, he tells himself, he can do this.

There’s a moment of silence, then a strangled, “ _What_? But I thought—”

“Go shower, Jay,” Yancy interrupts his brother, doesn’t even both moving from the bed, just continues smiling at the ceiling. “You can go second if you really want to. I already promised Raleigh he could go first,” he adds, cutting off the argument he knows is coming.

There’s a huff from somewhere outside the doorway, and then the sounds of feet padding away.

“Rals,” Yancy calls, knows his brother is still here, that he hasn’t left just yet.

“Mm?”

“C’mere.”

He glances to his side to see Raleigh beside the bed, arms crossed, eyebrow raised, smiling in spite of whatever his body language might be trying to say otherwise. Yancy scoots to the edge of the mattress, turning so that he can slide his legs around Raleigh’s thighs where they’re leaning against the frame, wrapping his arms about his brother’s middle.

“ _C’mere_ ,” he insists, smiling as well when Raleigh gets the idea and leans down, brushing their lips together. Yancy feels Raleigh’s tongue dart out, tentative, questing—this part of kissing is still somewhat new between them—and he answers it with his own. Relishes in the way it makes Raleigh shiver, in the taste that is purely _Raleigh_ exploding across his tongue. He pulls back the scantest of distances, their lips parting with a soft pop, his brother’s tongue tracing his lips.

“Go give that to your brother for me, would you?”

Raleigh makes a sound that Yancy thinks is a cross between a huff and a sound of contentment, and he rolls his eyes. Only Raleigh…

He leans back up, fisting the kid’s hair and tilting his head so he can slot their mouths together. There is nothing tentative about the way their tongues intertwine this time, nothing slow and measured. It’s not hurried, either, but more something…almost comfortable. Everything is passion and heat and shivers running down Yancy’s spine, and yet there’s love there, feeling, emotion, all of it flowing between them, almost as if Yancy can feel what his brother’s feeling.

This time, he only pulls away because his lungs are burning, like when he and Raleigh are trying to crawl down one another’s throats, trying to fuse their very souls, his brain temporarily forgets that he needs to breathe, too. They both pant into one another’s open mouths, cheeks flushed, eyes hooded, a line of saliva connecting Raleigh’s tongue to Yancy’s bottom lip.

“And that,” Yancy takes a gulp of air, swallowing, disappointed when the action breaks the thin thread of connection, “is just for you, kiddo.”

The smile that splits Raleigh’s face is the most beautiful thing Yancy’s ever seen.

 

-

 

Yancy keeps his promise later that evening.

The next morning, he wakes to a sore dick—holy _fuck_ but the kids have crazy-ass stamina—a feeling of utter contentment, and two brothers who are still completely asleep, both of them wrapped around him as per usual. He chuckles to himself, laying a kiss on each of their heads, and manages to wiggle his arms out of their collective grasp until he can wrap them around his brothers’ shoulders, stroking idly at their hair. Raleigh makes a soft little snuffling noise, while Jamie makes a sound almost like a kitten and cracks a single eye open in a blue-gray sliver.

“Go back to sleep, love,” Yancy leans over to kiss his youngest brother again, a small thrill going through him when he feels Jamie’s lips sluggishly responding, the kid not awake enough to do much more than that. Leans further to leave another kiss on the kid’s forehead. “Love you, Jay.”

Jamie mumbles something—probably returning the words in kind—but he’s asleep again before he can get it all out. Yancy feels himself smiling. He settles again, keeping a firm grip on the two bodies around him, and, though he doesn’t let himself fall back into dreaming, allows himself to just lie there, to, for once, not worry about anything: simply basking in the morning.

 


	3. on the edge of the night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots more of...everything in this chapter than I intended. Sex. Angst. Fluff. Plot.
> 
> Wow. Whoops. 
> 
> (please to forgives)
> 
> (oh look the chapter number rose to /5... oops...)

Raleigh and Jamie are months away from graduating when the call goes out that the PPDC are looking for candidates to become Jaeger pilots.

Raleigh and Jamie want to go immediately. Yancy, however, insists that they finish high school first, despite their protests.

“And what if it doesn’t work out?” He keeps his voice calm, level; he’ll be the fucking voice of reason if no one else’ll step up the plate. “I will _not_ have you two throwing away your futures just because of something that has less than a five percent chance of even working in the first place.”

When he manages to get Jamie on his side, Raleigh relents, though he does scowl at both of them.

“No sex for a week,” the kid growls at both of them, all but stalking away.

 

-

 

He makes it a week before he’s waking Yancy with a lubed-up hand on his dick, slick hole already swallowing the flared head, the rest sliding in easily enough that Yancy’s fairly positive the kid’s spent a good long while fingering himself open.

“Shut up and fuck me,” Raleigh growls when Yancy laughs, waking Jamie. Yancy, however, stills, and smiles up at Raleigh before shaking their younger brother’s shoulder, waking completely.

“Hey, Jay, wanna fuck Rals together?”

“What, you mean like, take turns?”

Yancy laughs again.

“No, more like at the same time.”

He’s not sure which is hotter: the noise Jamie makes, or the way Raleigh moans and clenches down on his dick. Yancy leans up, making sure to keep his hips maddeningly still as one hand holds his younger brother in place, and kisses past Raleigh’s lips, swallowing the “Oh _fuck_ yes,” the kid breathes into his mouth.

 

-

 

Graduation comes. Graduation goes. Yancy makes sure he cheers as obnoxiously as he possibly can when Jamie, and then Raleigh, each walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. He goes to find them afterward amidst the crowd of gowns and parents, and maybe-kinda-sorta tears up when they both rush towards him at once, the three of them holding on to one another.

“So proud of you both,” he whispers, leaning—leaning _up_ , because _jesus_ his brothers have gotten tall, the fucking mutants—to kiss their foreheads. He decidedly does not think about how everything looks slightly blurry, how, when he blinks, there are thin lines of warmth running down his cheeks. “So fuckin’ proud. Love you both so much.”

Yancy takes them all out to eat that night, something the three of them hadn’t really allowed themselves ever since  their dad—if the man were still fit to be called that—had left them to fend for themselves. Yancy waves away Raleigh and Jamie’s objections.

“It’s your big day. You guys deserve it.”

“But we didn’t do anything this big for your graduation,” Jamie protests when they sit down at an Italian restaurant down town their parents used to take them to for big occasions—the owners had loved the three of them, Yancy’s fairly certain, because they would always make sure that the Becket Boys got their pizza made in the shape of a T-Rex. They’ve been given a small, round table that’s probably meant to have four or five chairs distributed evenly around it; Raleigh and Jamie waste absolutely no time in scooting their seats closer to Yancy, surrounding him as they usually do, the three of them taking up only about half of the space at the table. Yancy has to laugh at his brother’s objection because, no, they didn’t, but...

“So? There was only one of me. There’re two’ve you. Besides,” he lifts his hands and cards fingers through their hair, feeling a low thrill go through him at the soft sounds they both make under his touch, “s’not like we’re gonna have a chance to do something like this again. What with being at the Academy and all.”

Raleigh and Jamie both make another protest when they actually open their menus and look at the prices of everything, but Yancy once again tells them to shut up and enjoy themselves.

“If I hear one more complaint out of you two,” he finally says, the heat in his voice not from anger, “then you won’t be getting your real graduation present when we get back home.”

The protests die completely after that. Later, as they’re driving back to their house, Yancy pretends he doesn’t see Raleigh and Jamie sneaking a few bills into his wallet where he’s thrown it on the dash. He’ll just make sure to spend it on them if he ever gets the chance.

 

-

 

Later, after Yancy’s blown both his brothers for so long that his jaw aches, after both of them are quivering messes of limbs and sweat and flushed cheeks, cocks slick with spit, he gives them their real surprise.

Or, more to the point, he shows them.

When he removes the plug from his ass, sighing softly as the blunt tip rubs against his prostate on the way out, Jamie actually does come just from the sight, swearing loudly. He sets the toy aside, mouth descending on Jamie once again to lap his brother clean and coax him back to hardness.

“C’mon, Jay,” he knows he’s goading the kid, smiling around the cock in his mouth, tonguing at the slit to catch every last vestige of his brother that he can. “How’m I supposed to get fucked by both of you at once if only one of you is hard?”

And, yeah, that works like a fucking charm.

“That’s my good boy,” he practically purrs when Jamie’s cock goes rock hard against his tongue, running his hands up and down Jamie’s body as he straddles the kid’s hips. Yancy holds Jamie’s eyes as he grabs his brother by the base and positions them both, pausing for a split second to say, “Now fucking give it to me, little bro,” before sinking down on the cock prodding at his slick entrance.

 

-

 

“And when the _fuck_ were you planning on telling me?”

Yancy feels a twinge of something go through him at the way Jamie’s eyes widen, something akin to panic crossing his brother’s features. He’s never, _ever_ before actually _yelled_ at either of them. It’s one of the things he’s most proud of—both that he’d never resorted to it, and that he’d never had to—and it makes the moment that much heavier that he’s doing it now. This, though, he thinks to himself savagely, is justified.

“I—I didn’t think—”

“No, you fucking _didn’t_.” Yancy’s fists clench at his side, fingernails biting into his palms. He can practically feel his teeth grinding into powder with how hard he’s clenching them. “For three fucking _years_ it has been my _job_ to take care of you two. How the _fuck_ am I supposed to do that if you don’t tell me that you’re fucking _going blind_?”

“Yancy—”

He waves Raleigh’s words, the fingers that try to wrap around his arm, away.

“I told you, Jamieson,” the words come out low, through clenched teeth; there’s something warm at the corners of his vision, but Yancy blinks it back, refuses to see the tears gathering beneath Jamie’s eyes, “I fucking _told_ you: _no_ more secrets, no more _keeping things from one another_. What the _fuck_ made you think that this was _okay_?“

He can almost see it, see the moment his words break something in his brother. The moment the terror and guilt mix, muddle, and transform into rage, a fire like nothing Yancy’s ever seen out of his youngest brother—a fire so much like Raleigh that, for a moment, Yancy almost forgets which brother he’s talking to.

“Because I was scared, okay? Do you have any idea what it’s like? Watching you,” the tears in Jamie’s eyes are falling now, are tracking shiny lines down his face, reflecting the light of the examination room’s rows of fluorescent bulbs, “watching you fucking _killing_ yourself just so we can have a normal life? Knowing that the reason you’re too tired to get up in the morning is sometimes because you didn’t fucking _eat_ the day before?”

Yancy’s breath catches.

“I never—”

“Don’t you _dare_ lie to me, Yance,” Jamie overrides him. “I saw. I _knew_. We _both_ did,” he glances over at Raleigh, and Yancy tracks the moment to see their middle brother looking resolutely at the ground, not meeting either of their eyes; it’s all the confirmation Yancy needs.

“We _both knew_. So why the _fuck_ do you think I’d come to you because of something as stupid a-as not being able to—”

Jamie’s voice catches in his throat, like he’s gagging on the words, and Yancy’s anger—whatever was left of it—evaporates completely, replaced by gut-wrenching worry. He crosses the room to his brother where the kid is still in his paper gown, hasn’t even had enough time to change or even stand up. Wraps Jamie up in a hug that the kid initially fights, but after a moment he gives up, wrapping his arms around Yancy as well, the PPDC logos on the paper warping weirdly.

“You don’t know what it’s _like_ , Yance,” Yancy’s just trying to hold on, trying to not let the spasming sobs that wrack his brother’s body pull them apart, can feel tears soaking through his thin t-shirt, “to realize that I can’t _see_ you anymore, can’t see you _smile_ , can just see a fucking fuzzy shape that I have to know is you because it sounds like you, acts like you. I—” Jamie looks up at him, then, eyes wide, hands seeking Yancy’s jaw, “I can see you here, like this, but I-I don’t...I don’t...I _can’t_ …”

Everything slots into place, then, a thousand signs, a thousand memories that suddenly make so much more sense. Jamie becoming so much more cuddly, his constant need to be close. The way he’d taken to touching their faces, to bumping their noses. How Jamie had refused to drive after he got his permit at sixteen, always letting Yancy or Raleigh do it.

Little things.

Things he should’ve noticed.

And, if this is scary for Yancy, how must _Jamie_ —

The guilt nearly chokes him, and Yancy squeezes his brother more tightly, glances up for maybe a half second to beckon Raleigh over. When all three of them are finally huddled together, Raleigh and Yancy encircling Jamie in their grasp, Jamie finally sinks into them, gown crinkling as he clutches at them with something approaching desperation.

“It’s okay Jay, it’s alright,” It’s not, but Yancy has to say the words anyway. “Everything will be fine.”

 

-

 

“Yan-cyyyyy, help me practice, pleeeease?”

Yancy groans, brows scrunching at Raleigh’s child-like whine. He opens his eyes, squinting them once the barely-there light of the desk lamp in their quarters burns his retinas that’d been enjoying the cool blackness of near-sleep. Jamie is bent over said desk, scribbling away at the tech notes for their exam next week, the grey, plastic frames the PPDC had issued him propped on his nose. The cheap plastic creaks loudly enough that Yancy can hear it when Jamie pushes them up from where they’d been slipping down the bridge of his nose. Raleigh, meanwhile, is standing at the foot of the bed, a thin sheen of sweat covering him from where Yancy knows the kid’s been working out—never seems to stop, really—in just sweats, opting to forgo a shirt. The sight is, to put it mildly, mouth-watering. Tempting.

However, Yancy makes a gesture at Jamie, tiredly waving his hand in their youngest brother’s direction.

“Ask Jay, kid. He’s all young and spry ‘n shit. ‘M old ‘n tired.”

“You’re four years older than us, Yance,” Jamie pipes up, not looking up, the motion of his pen never faltering.

“Three,” Raleigh retorts easily, and Yancy doesn’t have to look to know his brother is smiling, looks anyway because Raleigh really does look good when he gets that look on his face.

“He’s four years older than you for a month—”

“Month and four days,” Yancy grumbles, letting his eyes slip closed again, his own smile pulling at his lips.

“—so that’s good enough for me,” Jamie finishes as if he’d never interrupted.

“By your own logic, then, Yance should be five years older than you. After all—”

A snort interrupts whatever steam Raleigh might’ve been about to gather.

“Nah, Rals, more like for two days I’m three years younger than him instead of four,” Jamie does look up from his work then, sending a blinding smile Raleigh’s way. “Try to let the rest of us do the thinking. If we need anything thrown around, we’ll call yo— _oomph_.”

Raleigh flings himself across the room, grabbing Jamie by the shoulders and pinning him in a headlock. Yancy watches, amused, as they scuffle together, Jamie struggling and cursing even as he tries to throw Raleigh off. Raleigh's always been stronger than him, Yancy knows, if only by virtue of the fact that he's older. However, that's not to say that Jamie's weak. Or not resourceful.

Which is to say, when Jamie apparently realizes he's not going to be able to get himself free, not with the way Raleigh's interlocking his arms and hands, the kid stops holding back.

"Wha— _hey_ , fuck, Jay—ah! Fuck fu-huck ah, _no_! No fair, Jay! S-s-stop—nggh!—Yancy! Help! Fuck, Jay, ha!—no—"

Yancy just watches, grinning at them, as Jamie's fingers find all Raleigh's ticklish spots, digging in mercilessly. An advantage, he finds himself thinking, of knowing one another as intimately as they do. He ignores his brother's cries for help, letting out a, "Shoulda thought about that before you interrupted him studying, kiddo," before letting his eyes slip closed once more. There’s the sound of Raleigh’s struggles, his giggles and pleas as Jamie continues his assault, some scuffling that moves about the room which he assumes is Raleigh trying to free himself, to get away. Something metal skids over the floor, and Yancy can tell by now that its the bunk bed that’s against one of the walls, the one that family quarters are given on the assumption that the kids will use it while the parents will take the double Yancy’s using to doze off. The double that all three of them somehow manage to squeeze on to almost every night.

He starts when he feels the mattress dip awkwardly with motion, and his eyes slit themselves open to take in the sight of his brothers quite literally wrestling for dominance. An elbow catches Yancy in the side, and he grunts at the impact before he sits up and growls out, “Alright, fine, if that’s how it’s gonna be…”

He reaches in with both hands, fingers knowing almost instinctively where to go, and attacks both Jamie and Raleigh at their weakest points. There’s a moment where Jamie’s eyes go almost comically wide, and then both of his brothers are writhing, trying to get away from him. Yancy doesn’t let up, doesn’t relent, simply continues, switching spots so they can’t curl away and evade him, until both of them have fallen apart and are beneath him on the bed, rolling around to try to save themselves.

“Are you two gonna behave?”

The question doesn’t get an answer except panting giggles and pleas, hands seeking his arms to push him off.

“Rals? you gonna leave Jay alone?”

“F-fuck, fine, yes Yance!” There are tears running down Raleigh’s face from the force of his laughter.

“Jay?”

Jamie doesn’t say anything, but he does make a plaintive, assenting sound that Yancy takes as being good enough. He leans back on his haunches, content to just watch them both as they get their breathing back under control, Raleigh’s muscles tensing and relaxing in sequence a sight he commit to memory because _jesus_ the kid is beautiful. Jamie blinks up at him for a moment, and it’s then that Yancy realizes the kid’s glasses had fallen off at some point. He glances around before catching sight of them over on the floor by the desk, carefully slipping out of bed and retrieving them.

“Thanks, Yance,” Jamie’s cheeks flush slightly pinker than they already were as he slips the article back over his eyes, and he’s not quite looking at him. Yancy’s used to it by now. Instead of calling him out on it, he leans forward to kiss his brother on the cheek, breathing a soft, “No worries, kiddo,” against the skin there, bumping their noses before he pulls completely away.

“So, since you both forced me to get up,” Yancy pokes Raleigh in the side, purposefully aiming for one of the kid’s ticklish spots and making him squirm, “how ‘bout that practice, Rals?”

He gets a breathless chuckle in answer before Raleigh rolls gracelessly out of bed—okay, so not _purposefully_ graceful, but everything either of his brothers do seems to have a certain sinuous grace to it—and reaches a hand out towards him. Yancy takes it, letting his younger brother—his younger brother who is now taller than him—haul him up before he hooks a leg behind the kid’s knee and takes him down hard.

“Point,” Yancy smirks at where Raleigh’s groaning and cursing softly against the floor. “Gonna have to try better than that, Rals.”

“I call winner,” Jamie pipes up just before Raleigh’s chorus of _no fair!_ fills the room.

 

-

 

The three of them all make the first cut.

Yancy’s not surprised.

 

-

 

Each of the Beckets go through about half a dozen possible candidates before any of them face each other. They have varying degrees of success: Yancy manages to beat all his opponents, while two of Raleigh’s and only one of Jamie’s beat them soundly. Of course, it’s not a competition—not really—so win or lose doesn’t matter. It simply means they weren’t as compatible as their initial brain scans would’ve suggested.

First, Yancy and Jamie face off.

Yancy can tell from the moment their staves meet for the first time that it’s different.

He’s practically raised Jamie for over four years, has known the kid for his whole life. He knows when Jamie’s muscles tense a certain way that the kid is going to feint, that he’s going to reverse his grip at the last second and come at him overhand instead of sideways. And he can see the realization in Jamie’s eyes, can read it as clear as day, his mind interpreting faster than his body can respond, that the kid _knows_ , and is switching things up halfway through.

It’s dizzying. It’s _exhilarating_.

They trade blows, their hanbo cracking against one another or finding nothing but air. After five minutes, both of them breathing hard, Yancy loses his footing on the mat, and Jamie scores a point. Everyone present cheers and claps, Raleigh’s voice chief among them, and before Jamie can even recover or move back, Yancy’s striking out, landing a stiff blow that becomes a light tap at the last possible second to Jamie’s exposed ribs. His brother pinks and slides back immediately, and they face off once more.

Five minutes later finds Yancy at three points and Jamie still at one. they trade blows back and forth, both of them looking for an opening. Finally, Yancy more feels a shift in the pattern of Jamie’s defense than anything else, and he whirls through a complicated series of forms, feeling the hole widen further, before modifying the last thrust to slither through the gap. It gently taps Jamie on the chin, and the kid recoils almost violently in what Yancy can only assume is surprise and ends up falling on his ass.

“Point and match,” their kwoon instructor intones as everyone claps again. “Good job boys. Take a spot.”

“What, you mean you need more?” Yancy pants at her, placing his bo in the rack at the edge of the mats. He gets an arched eyebrow in answer.

“I said you did a good job. Not enough to convince anyone that you’re immediately compatible, but certainly enough to warrant a round in a simulator as a potential match. Some pairs that are currently piloting went on for near-on an hour in their matches here. The Gage twins, for example, were point-free after a forty minute bout.” Her other eyebrow joins the first. “Are you suggesting that what you just showed me was comparable to that?”

Yancy doesn’t duck his head, but  he does let his eye slide to the tip of her nose.

“No, ma’am.”

“I didn’t think so. Next up,” a finger slides down her clipboard, and Yancy watches as she pauses, then deliberately skips down a few lines, “Becket, Jamieson, and Becket, Raleigh. You can sit this one out, Becket senior.”

Jamie makes a soft sound of protest from beside Yancy, massaging his thighs before sighing and moving to comply, pushing his glasses back up his nose. Raleigh just smiles that megawatt smile of his and practically skips onto the mats. They take their hanbo in hand, and, at a word from their instructor, begin.

The two of them are so obviously compatible it almost makes Yancy weep.

His brothers practically mirror each other, turning this way and that, staves lashing out and blocking in the same motions, nothing but give and take, one step forward, two steps back, three forward, two more back, neither ever truly giving ground for more than a few instants. Where Yancy and Jamie’s match had been somewhere on the border between combat and dialogue, Raleigh and Jamie moving together is something more akin to a dance. They both pause for the same instant, panting after fifteen minutes of scoreless movement, regarding one another, smiles splitting their faces. They’re _beautiful_ , like the matched pair Yancy has always known they are, and he can only try to imagine the feelings singing through their veins. The very thought of ever being jealous never even crosses his mind when he takes in the way their instructor is watching his brothers, the way he knows—can just fucking tell—from the look on her face that his brothers are going to pilot together, that they have what it takes.

Until they start moving again.

Raleigh and Jamie step towards one another at an unspoken signal, bo staves raised, but something is off. Something is wrong. Jamie deflects one blow, then a second, before Yancy sees something flash across his eyes. Raleigh must see it too, because he frowns, but doesn’t let up, not really, forcing Jamie back a step, then another, then a third. Jamie takes a single step forward to strike—and, fuck, Yancy can see the way his brother’s knees are shaking in that one step, how his match with Yancy, which hadn’t been this beautiful, synchronous whirl of limbs, had worn on him—but Raleigh blocks his blow with ease and ripostes with one of his own. Yancy can only watch in muted disbelief and shock as Jamie tries to block, but, instead of knocking the attack away, manages only to redirect it straight at his own face.

There’s a horrible moment where the only thing Yancy knows is the sound of distressed plastic cracking, breaking, _shattering_ , followed by wood striking flesh and bone. 

And then Jamie is on the floor, screaming.

Yancy reacts before anyone else so much as breathes, pushing people aside and running up towards his brothers. Raleigh, of course, gets their first by sheer virtue of being closer, dropping his hanbo and cradling Jamie’s form. Jamie who is still screaming, clutching at his face, and it’s only then that Yancy sees a thin trail of blood peeking from between the kid’s fingers.

Fingers that are closed over his left eye.

 

-

 

Yancy doesn’t really remember much after that, after he crouches down and just...sits there, helpless, unsure what to do. He remembers snarling when people try to crowd them, telling them to back the fuck off. Remembers tentatively trailing his fingers over Jamie’s arm, over his baby brother’s side, telling him it’ll be okay even as the kid— _his_ kid, his _brother_ —screams that it _hurts_. Remembers men and women in blue taking Jamie away, Raleigh’s blood-soaked hands clutching at Yancy’s shirt when their brother is out of his grasp.

He remembers running down a hallway, the walls and marking familiar, trying desperately to pick out the signs that will point them towards the Academy’s hospital. Remembers sitting in a waiting room with Raleigh still practically attached to him, no longer sobbing, red-rimmed eyes dry, body having long since given up on tears. Remembers carding a hand through Raleigh’s hair, whispering promises, whispering absolutions of guilt even as Raleigh whispers back, “All my fault, my fault, I hurt him, I hurt him, _my_ fault—” under his breath in an unending mantra.

Yancy remembers a doctor coming out to tell them that they were doing all they could, but that a shard of Jamie’s glasses had pierced his eye and damaged a section of his retina. That, since the glasses were made of plastic and not glass, the damage wasn’t as deep as it could’ve been, but it was also much less precise. That they were planning an emergency, experimental procedure that might— _might_ —allow their brother to regain his eyesight, but that there were no promises.

“We’re also going to correct his aberrant lenses while we’re in there,” she tells them, smiling, no doubt trying to be reassuring. “We want to remove as many possible obstructions to his recovery as we can.”

“Won’t that just make his recovery harder?” Yancy’s voice asks, his hands never ceasing in their motions of comforting his brother. The doctor, however, just shakes her head.

“If his retina does end up healing the way we hope it to, exposing it to flawed conditions will make it heal incorrectly, so the correction needed to happen in one of his eyes anyway. We figured we’d just be done with it and get the other one on top of that.”

There’s silence for what feels like an eternity before Yancy finally manages to find his voice again.

“What are his chances?”

_Hopeful_ , he remembers her saying. They were _hopeful_.

 

-

 

That night, Raleigh practically tries to crawl under Yancy’s skin. Straddles him when Yancy lays down, kisses him with an intensity that’s almost frightening, a desperation that Yancy can taste.

“Please,” he’s whispers between panted breaths, “please, I—Yance, I need—I _need_ —”

Yancy doesn’t let him keep speaking, instead swallows the words with understanding. Flips them so that Raleigh is beneath him, lets the kid flip himself over until he’s on hands and knees, presenting himself to his older brother. Uses his tongue and fingers to open Raleigh up—at least he does until the kid begs him to stop, to just take him. And then he keeps on doing it anyway, unwilling to hurt Raleigh the way he knows the kid is desperate to be hurt. Relishes in the moan Raleigh makes when he sheathes himself within his brother’s body. Sets up a relentless pace—he’s willing to at least do that much—and splays a hand between Raleigh’s shoulder blades, pushing and forcing his brother’s body down.

Pretends he doesn’t hear Raleigh sobbing even through his moans, apologies, begging— _please please don’t hate me I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean to never wanted to hurt you I’m so sorry god please don’t hate me_ —swallowed up by the pillow the kid’s using as a mouthguard. Drops reassurances on the kids skin, promises— _he doesn’t hate you we could never hate you we love you so much Rals so much it was an accident we know that we forgive you it’ll be okay_ —and devotion tattooed into Raleigh’s flesh in the form of teeth marks and fingernail welts. Leaves his testament to their love buried deep inside his brother’s body, frantically stroking Raleigh’s pulsing dick until he’s spilling over Yancy’s fingers and staining the sheets.

Kisses away the tear tracks, and holds Raleigh close as the kid falls into a fitful sleep with a slurred, “Thanks, Yance...love y’,” his own body not far behind.

 

-

 

Jamie can’t pilot.

Well, he _can_. Technically. The compatibility trial had shown, according to all present, that he was likely a strong match with Raleigh, and potentially even a strong match with Yancy if they stuck them in a simulator together. However, with his corrective surgery on top of the additional complication of his retinal reconstruction—at least, that’s what the docs had called it—he’s looking at up to six solid months before his vision has even the possibility of being fully restored. Six months that the Academy isn’t willing to wait.

He can apparently see perfectly out of his right eye now, but his left still has a long way to go. When a squirming Raleigh had finally asked him about it, Yancy remembers Jamie’s gaze finding him where he was watching from the bed, almost as if to say, ‘ _I know you’re responsible for this_.’ Which, okay, point; Yancy had been the one to suggest that Raleigh ask Jamie what _exactly_ his life was like now, hoping it would make the kid feel less guilty.

“Not too bad. I can _see_ , but, like, the middle is missing. Sort of. Only on the left.” Jamie shakes his head, eyes on the ground. “It’s...weird.”

Raleigh stares at their brother for a moment, and Yancy watches as he reaches out an arm, rests his hand on Jamie’s shoulder. Watches him stroking softly and moving his way upward until his palm is cupped under Jamie’s jaw, his thumb tracing high cheekbones until Jamie looks up at him again. Watches as Jamie’s face breaks out into a soft grin, how he tugs at Raleigh’s arm until their foreheads are touching, how a finger is placed against Raleigh’s lips when he opens his mouth.

“I don’t blame you, Rals. I never have. It was an _accident_. _No_ ,” Yancy can’t see Raleigh’s face from this angle anymore except in profile, but he can see the way Jamie’s face hardens, the single finger being replaced by a palm, “it _was_. You didn’t do anything wrong. Stop blaming yourself.”

The fact that Yancy and Raleigh have been paired together, have their first drift trial tomorrow morning, is left unsaid. It’s still there, hovering over them like some small black cloud, but they don’t _need_ to talk about it. Anything they need to say is said in the silence.

Jamie doesn’t blame Raleigh. Isn’t resentful of them. Is genuinely _happy_ for them.

“If I can’t pilot, I’ll just get on your tech crew: keep my big brothers’ jaeger working. Make sure you morons don’t wreck it.”

And that’s the last that’s ever said about it.

 

-

 

Drifting with Raleigh is like a hurricane. So many thoughts, memories, emotions, all of them not his own, rush past Yancy’s mind in a blue stream, moving from one to the other so quickly that Yancy can barely keep up. Memories he recognizes, the wrong perspective, the point of view too low—or, in the case of the more recent moments, too high—flash, one after the other, mixing, melding, contorting and bending until they blend together with those stored in his own brain, becoming impossible to distinguish.

_Fighting off the older kids that dared pick on his brothers._

_“Jamie, c’mon, it’ll be fine—”_

_“—om? Mom what’s wrong?”_

_“—e’s my big brother, too! You can’t just steal hi—”_

_When did he start to feel this way? When did he start allowing himself to look at his little brother like—_

_A small boy rests in his arms, proudly proclaiming “Yeh-see! Yeh-see Yeh-see Yeh-see!” as another beckons to be held, the same word falling from his lips._

_“Why does he have to go, Mom?”_

_“—s okay guys, it’ll be okay, shh, don’t cry, Rals. We’ll be fine. We’ll figu—”_

_“—mind me how it’s fair that I’m the oldest yet I’m the shortest? I’m raising two mutants, I swe—”_

_“Do you think he’s lonely?”_

_“—ncy! Yancy, wait for us!”_

_“I love you.”_

Everything coalesces before Yancy’s eyes with those last words, said-heard-felt in too many voices to count, and he glances over at Raleigh to see the kid looking back at him. _Feels_ his brother looking at him, _knows_ he’s doing it with an awareness beyond simply seeing it, can _see himself_ —

“Jesus,” someone, somewhere, breathes. “Synchronicity at nintey-eight point seven percent. How...how is that even possible?”

There’s movement out of the corner of his eye—or maybe it’s Raleigh’s eye?—and Yancy turns his head to track it, sees his youngest-younger- _youngest-younger_ brother looking up at him-me- _them-us_.

“Yance?”

Yancy watches-feels-sees Raleigh tilt his head in the same way he does, finds the thought flitting across their shared mindscape that the motion is...probably pretty creepy, actually.

“Yeah, kiddo?”

The words, thankfully, come out of his own mouth, and Yancy has to fight for a moment to separate what’s _him_ and what’s not. Their brains might be shared, their personalities melding, the borders between their minds gone, but he can still feel...something. Something that is immutably _him_ at his very core. He pushes it into its proper place, no longer floating aimlessly, piles everything—memories, thoughts, emotions—on top of it. Uses it as the bedrock of what defines _Yancy_ , to establish himself in the gold-blue expanse he and Raleigh are dancing within.

“What the—” the not-Jamie voice is back. “You ever see anything like this? What’re they doing?”

He doesn’t know how, but he can _feel_ Raleigh doing the same thing he is, feels a thread of fear and exultation—it can’t seem to decide which to be—swimming between them at the thought of just...letting go, of existing like this forever, closer than they could ever possibly have _dreamed_ of being.

When he opens his eyes again, he is Yancy once more. He sees from his own eyes despite seeing from his brother’s as well and yet, now, the distinction is clear. It’s almost paradoxical, some part of their minds whispers, how they’ve managed to be separate yet are merged almost completely. Neither question it. Yancy tilts his head further, seeing-feeling-knowing that Raleigh doesn’t do the same this time, because it’s not _Raleigh_ that wants to do it, and asks, “Everything alright, Jay?”

“Y-yeah,” Jamie laughs, the sound holding an undercurrent of nervous energy. “Just—you’re drifting?”

“Yup,” Yancy nods.

“It’s _awesome_.” Yancy doesn’t have time to silence Raleigh, and instead sends an instantaneous recrimination.

‘ _Don’t fucking rub it in his face, Rals._ ’

There’s a flash of surprise across their link before Raleigh answers.

‘ _What the—we can talk in here? Whatever. Jay accepted this over a week ago, Yance. He’s fine—_ ’

_‘Still don’t have to rub it in his face like tha—_ ’

Yancy’s thought is cut off at the root when Jamie smiles at them, teeth showing.

“I’m glad. ‘M  happy for you guys.”

The next hour, even though it consists of the Beckets going through several acclimation steps the techs walk them through and is one of the most mentally taxing things Yancy’s ever done, is a complete blur after that.

 

-

 

Sex, they discover after their third time in the simulators, is mind-blowing post-drift.

Yancy can _feel_ Raleigh sheathing himself in their brother’s body, the sensations heightened by the way Jamie is humming around his dick where the kid’s swallowed it to the root— _the fucking overachiever_ , one of them thinks wrly.

There’s that, too. The ghost drifting. Every now and then they catch parts of themselves bleeding over, the line between _you_ and _me_ blurring. Stray thoughts or emotions, a phantom sensation, usually. The techs, the doctors, the drift experts, all say it shouldn’t happen. Jamie, on the other hand, argues with the, that it’s to be expected, that drifting forces two brains to sync up, to behave the same way, to feel and do what the other feels and does, though both hard-wired connections and wireless ones.

“It only makes sense,” he’d explained, his hands waving emphatically in the air between them, “that your brains become sort of...changed in some way. To behave the same. So that, when one of your minds does something, the other one fires in the exact same way, almost as if they’re quantum-entangled—” Which had been the point that Yancy had checked out, because quantum physics and neuroscience were _not_ his strong suits, let alone trying to mash them together. 

All he knows is that it makes for goddamn _amazing_ sex.

Jamie doesn’t seem to mind, either. At least, not if the way he comes untouched every time Raleigh and Yancy take him like this, their movements perfectly synchronized and deliberate, is any indication. Or the way he practically drags them both to bed whenever they’ve had a day in the sims, tearing their clothes off and bringing their hands around to feel how he’s prepped himself, how open and wet he is for them. Or how, on one memorable occasion, , he’d practically pushed Yancy onto the bed—damn his younger brothers for both being taller than him—and seated himself on Yancy’s dick, looking over his shoulder at Raleigh and commanding their brother, “Fuckin’ _give it to me_ , Rals.” 

Yeah, Yancy’s fairly certain Jamie doesn’t mind at all.

 

-

 

They all graduate from the Academy together the day after Yancy’s birthday, three days after Jamie turns eighteen. The kid graduates at the top of his class, of course, and is told he can pick quite literally any Jaeger crew he wants to join. Yancy and Raleigh, meanwhile, are told that a brand new Jaeger, named Gipsy Danger, is theirs to pilot.

Jamie requests to be on Gipsy’s crew, which is still being put together as the last of the Jaeger’s systems are installed. He receives the notice less than a week later that he’s been made head tech. On the same day, literally hours previous, they’d all visited the Academy doctors to check on how Jamie’s eye is healing. After Raleigh and Yancy both get kicked out for a slew of tests, the Beckets are informed that Jamie’s eye is almost completely healed—practically better than new, and _that_ makes Yancy growl protectively, because _nothing_ is better than his brothers—and that any residual black spots should fade as his retina rewires itself to work properly.

They meet Gipsy when they’re transferred to Anchorage three days after that. She’s fucking _beautiful_. And she’s _their’s_. They all stand in silence for a moment, watching the blue behemoth being wheeled in, before Raleigh breathes out a low, “Wow…”

Of course, before bed that night, Raleigh announces that he wants to have sex in the conn pod before they have to take her out on a mission.

Of course.

 

-

 

They may or may not make that certain fantasy a reality.

(They also may or may not leave the stain there on the wall, where only the three of them know to look for it.)

 

-

 

Years pass. Raleigh and Yancy make names for themselves in Gipsy, quickly racking up kills and becoming goddamn rock stars. The golden boys of the PPDC. There are certain expectations for them. The tabloids are constantly wondering about their apparent lack of barcrawling, how the Beckets are only ever seen tossing back a few drinks, laughing with their friends and brother, and then making their escape. There’s speculation about their apparent lack of attention to jaeger flies, and the media gets the ridiculous idea that they’re all saving themselves for someone special or some equally ridiculous pile of bullshit.

What none of them know is that the Beckets have all already found their special someone. Or, as the case may be, someones. No one outside the ‘domes knows. The people inside, on the other hand, are _quite_ aware. No one says anything overt, but Jamie tells them—based on the stories the tech teams swap—that pilots developing relationships, regardless of whether they’re related or not, is apparently quite common. That, apparently, the main cause for confusion—not discomfort, not disgust, not judgment, but simple _confusion_ —is how Jamie’s related to it all.

“They think that you and I must’ve drifted once or something,” he tells Raleigh with a wry grin as Yancy, for once, finds himself not in the center, but rather one Jamie’s side, Raleigh’s arms helping him to encircle the rest of the ir brother, “since they’ve mostly heard about our match, short as it was compared to others.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” Raleigh says forcefully, and Yancy watches him cup Jamie’s jaw to bring their lips together softly, almost sweetly. “Yancy ‘n I don’t need to have drifted with you to love you. We already had that before any stupid tech.”

“Mm,” Jamie hums noncommittally before  his face splits in a grin. “Although, I gotta say, I am grateful to the drift tech, if only because you two fuck _so_ much better after—”

“Hey!” The protest is out of Yancy’s mouth before he can even think about it. “We fuck just fine when we’re not ghosting!”

“Oh, sure, sure, but when you _are_ ghosting it’s _so good_ , and—”

Yancy and Raleigh both growl at the same time, and they both attack their youngest brother, both, Yancy’s sure, determined to show the kid just _how_ good they are when they’re not post-drift. Never mind that they never really _stop_ ghosting nowadays.

 

- 

 

It begins just like any other fight.

The alarms blare at two— _two in the fucking morning, really?_ —but it doesn’t matter, because a Ranger is ready to wake at a moment’s notice. Yancy can feel Raleigh’s excitement swimming under his skin, is more aware of his brother’s excited but nervous energy at the back of his mind than of the waking world at first.

“Go, get something in your stomach and shower,” he hears Jamie’s voice above him. “I’ll handle him. Go on, go!”

There’s the sound of a frustrated whine above him, then a thrill passes through his body that isn’t his own. Yancy finally opens his eyes to see Jamie crouched above him, on his knees, Raleigh leaning over the edge of the bed so that their tongues can intertwine. He makes a noise of his own, something both sleepy and lewd at the same time even as he fights to keep his eyes cracked, and murmurs, “Mm, wish I could wake up to that sight every day.”

Both of them look down at him, almost as if surprised—though the grin Raleigh’s wearing tells Yancy that he’s anything but—before Jamie’s face splits into something feral.

“Go,” he shoos Raleigh away with a gesture towards the kitchenette in their room. “Food and clean. _Go_.”

“B-but—”

“Yancy can’t join you in the shower right now,” Jamie fills in before Raleigh can even finish his objection; seriously, sometimes Yancy wonders which of them are actually the drift compatible ones. “You need to _go_.”

Yancy watches Raleigh’s resolve crumble under the _look_ Jamie’s giving him before leaning down to steal a kiss from Yancy and dash into the bathroom. Yancy’s mind quietly reminds him that the kid’d forgotten to eat anything first, as per Jamie’s instructions, and he mentally adds _grab juicebox for Rals_ to his checklist of things to do. For now, though, with the shower running through the half-open door to the bathroom, he focuses on his youngest brother. Or, more to the point, his youngest brother focuses on him.

“C’mon, Yance,” it should be illegal to sound that sexy this early in the morning, Yancy decides, “get up, big bro. Wakey wakey.”

“Dun’ wanna.”

Jamie’s laughter is musical and soft, something husky taking its place before the kid leans down to whisper in Yancy’s ear.

“If you get up in the next two minutes, I’ll let you and Rals both fuck me as a reward for your fifth kill.” There a beat of silence filled only by the hot, wet breath against the shell of cartilage, then,

“At the same time.”

Yancy nearly falls on his ass, he rolls out of bed so quickly.

 

-

 

When they slot into the drift, the experience now more like turning up the volume a particular channel in both their heads that’s constantly at a low hum instead of switching to it outright, Yancy can’t help the grin that crosses his face when Raleigh sees what Jamie promised him.

“Oh, we are _so_ nailing this bastard.”

Yancy laughs—can’t help it, has a hard enough time keeping himself from getting hard in his drivesuit at the images flashing across Raleigh’s mind—before tilting his head almost teasingly towards Raleigh.

“Don’t get cocky, kid.”

 

-

 

Fire.

Yancy can feel it running down Raleigh’s arm where Gipsy no longer has one, can feel the phantoms of it swimming in his veins of his own arm, not cooking flesh and searing skin but still agonizing enough. Can feel it in his lungs as they both labor to draw in breath, the Kaiju _right fucking there_ , right in their face, jaws snapping no more than two feet from their faceplate. Can feel it churning in his gut, hot hatred for this monster that had _dared_ to hurt his brother, _his brother_ , **_his_**.

Cold.

Cold fear when claws breach the conn pod, jagged tips closing around where his rig is welded onto the ceiling. Hot flash of freezing tears on his face when he realizes this is it, _this is fucking it_ , and he has to try, he has to say it, he won’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t say it, doesn’t tell him, doesn’t tell _them_ one last time, doesn’t make sure—

“Raliegh, listen to me, you have to—” 

_—take care of your brother._

_—keep fighting without me._

_—listen. I love you both so much. So so much._

Cold air of a storm on the Pacific. Slicing past him like bitter knives as he sails through the air. Cold wall of unrelenting ice at his back; he’s pretty sure he hears something crack—can’t tell if he heard it with his ears or just felt it. Cold water that reaches up to swallow him in its depths.

A cold hole in his mind where the warmth and love and strength of his brother used to be, now nothing but a jagged void that cries out. Cold, blue light in the night as he hears Knifehead scream one last time before there’s a wave of force and heat that washes over him, and then everything is silent.

Silent, save for his brother’s screaming, still ringing in his ears.

The ocean pulls, tugs at him, dragging him down, and Yancy closes his eyes. Lets it.

Cold.

And darkness.


End file.
